How we made a difference for Oregon’s children
SEIU is an active member of the One Voice for Child Care Coalition, a group of child care advocates from across the state. The group includes the Head Start Association, the Child Care Resource and Referral Network, and the Oregon Association for the Education of Young Children, to name a few.
Every biennium the group meets to set a legislative agenda and work on joint advocacy efforts including lobby days and coordinated field activity around the legislative session.
In the past we have worked together to successfully advocate to fund our first union contract which included rate increases and training for child care providers. The contract also created the first ever Department of Human Services (DHS) child care orientation for exempt providers.
This session we worked together successfully to stop cuts to the Employment Related Day Care program restoring eligibility for working parents, restoring cuts that would have increased parent co-pays, and restoring cuts to rates for providers. We also worked to pass legislation to bring the SEIU orientation program to all exempt providers in the DHS subsidy program.
SEIU has been an integral part of One Voice lobby days for the past three legislative sessions, helping with everything from providing materials, to training, leading groups, scheduling, and purchasing lunches.
The One Voice Coalition has also participated in many SEIU events over the years, such as the United For Oregon march and joint in-district lobby work
In addition, we are part of a Family, Friend, Neighbor (FFN) child care committee that works on issues for non-traditional providers. The group has stakeholders from DHS, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) food, the Resource and Referral system, the Commission on Children and Families, and the Governor’s Commission on Child Care. That group developed a program to purchase and distribute child care toolkits (including books, music, health and safety info, ages and stages, etc) to providers. SEIU offered our orientation program as a place to distribute tool kits and have now gotten the kits in the hands of nearly a thousand providers.
The SEIU orientation also distributes information about the USDA food program which has nearly tripled participation among SEIU providers.
We also have a seat on the Governor’s Commission on Child Care where we actively participate in policy discussions and other commission work.
We bring the voices of FFN providers in the DHS system to the table. Because of the population that our members serve, we also act as a voice for low-income parents who often do not have a seat at the table.
